Shortcut Communications
by Diamroyal
Summary: If we learn through asking questions, what questions are the ones to ask, if we want to learn about each other? In Disdain of Mortals arc part 2 of 6.
1. Chapter One

Shortcut Communications Ch. I

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Everyone believes very easily whatever they fear or desire.

_Jean de La Fontaine (1621-1695)_

Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.

_William Faulkner_

We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.

_Henry Wadsworth Longfellow_ (1807-1882)

Maybe Rashid didn't recognize the stationary, but I knew it immediately. The heavy paper was smooth, and I knew the mere feel of it under the pads of my fingers would bring me into my memories. Even now I saw the great wooden desk, his hand wrapped around a gold pen as it swept across the crisp white paper, the black ink a swirl I couldn't even understand, the first time I watched it, but beautiful to me as it seemed to _appear_ on the page, despite the evidence of his hand.

Somewhere, lost in those memories, is the one where I was taught the difference between all the papers my father used. There was that one, the smooth, sheer _richness_ of it. The one they used for social occasions, one step down. I remember the invitations I'd seen, the edges laser-cut, the ink impermeable, stark black against stark white, never any colors. The business was all done on a different paper, so distinct from the other papers I was associated with. It was the tradition, and I was immersed in it. So how could I not know that paper? My name was engraved on it, but the address was not. I'd seen those envelopes many times. When I was small, he'd sent an entire box of envelopes away, and had my name engraved on all of them. For all the time I'd spent away from him, in school, he'd send those if I even had cause to hear from him. The address beneath my name was handwritten, his pen. This paper was never typed on. More tradition.

I didn't want to touch it. If I touched it, it might show me things, give me the feel of him in my heart, show me what it was that made him sit there to write it, with that gold pen. But I knew that if I didn't read it...if I didn't, I would always regret it, no matter if I _knew_, as soon as I saw it, that the words on the pure white folds of that paper were going to hurt me.

I had Rashid leave it on the table, because I didn't have the courage to pick it up, not yet. I ignored it until Rashid left the room sometime later, after informing me of the new events around the world. My binoculars were spying the beauty of Earth for me, though after I saw that letter packet, my enjoyment—even my absorption in the scene—was a pretense. The open window was just there to hide me, hide the knowledge I knew would show in my eyes.

When Rashid left, I waited ten seconds to be sure he was gone, the silent counting words running through my head, each one increasing my trepidation. Then I put the binoculars down gently on the sill where I had braced my elbows, stood, and sat down at the table-cum-desk, its surface covered with maps of Earth and charts of space, little markers for all the elements, the pieces of this war that weren't safe to put on anything electronic for fear of hackers making bright specks, scattered across the perfect pictures. The envelope was a sea of clear white, a break in the cacophony of color and lines. Even after its long journey, it still seemed untouched, pure white and clean, holding with it none of the dirt, the grime, that would surely gravitate towards any _other_ envelope. A sigh went through me as I dropped into the chair, and I just looked at that whiteness. Slowly my head sank down onto crossed arms, and, with my cheek pressed into the harshness of my perfectly pressed shirt, I stared. I could feel the sadness on my face, the draw of the skin around my eyes, the pinching of my lips.

I didn't want to read that letter. But without touching it, it couldn't tell me anything, and I knew nothing but that it was from _him._

My father. It would be the first time in over two years that I would have any contact at all with him, and there were no clues available to me. Except for the outward appearance of that letter, except for the dread in my heart. So I studied the letter; the thick, expensive paper hid anything that might have shown through; the clear cut address, the strokes firm; my name written formally, the address of this house just a tad bit smaller underneath it, all of it revealing nothing but what I already knew. Another sigh welled up against my throat. I was going to have to open it, and read it, and _feel_ it.

Slowly, as if I were approaching some small animal that could jump on me, and kill me, my hand reached out, unfolding from underneath my head—which promptly, with no effort from me, hit the other arm—my fingers stopping just shy of the edge of the brilliant white of the paper, the tips mere millimeters away from the sharp crease of the fold.

But it wasn't going to tell its secrets by sitting there, so I had to cross that last, miniscule distance, and touch, and feel, and _know_.

_Anger._ And disappointment. Grief, a sadness, though, it was so hard to tell _what_ kind of sadness this was. Was it the grief that came when someone died? Was it part of the disappointment, or was it that depressed sadness that follows through some people's hearts? I had to give a bitter chuckle, because I didn't know my father well enough to tell. The paper _was_ smooth, and _cold_. Full of that anger, and sadness, and, even, possibly...rejection. For me, I knew. And if it _was_ there, it would be total. He would never do anything by halves...it was his way, the thing that had made him such a great success, that...burning _need_ to complete, to finish. It wasn't something I could compete with.

Holding it, touching it, _feeling_ it, I didn't want to open it and actually read what he had to tell me so desperately. After all...if it were platitudes, but was tinged with all these feelings...what would that tell me about my father? And if it were another sort of letter entirely... Would that be a door to my past shutting? What door in my future would that blow open?

I sat there for a long time, turning that pristine white paper over and over in my hands, until, evidence to myself of my unworthiness, my hands, those large weapons that could deal out great amounts of pain, and suffering, but that I'd also learned could tend to delicate wounds, began to turn the paper gray. They were never _really_, truly clean anymore. Too much grease, too much sweat and blood were ingrained in them now. It'd take the end of the war to give me clean hands, and then...they'd only be clean on the outside, much like Lady Macbeth. I felt a wry, empty smile on my face.

I was no Shakespearian villain. Just, according to so many people, a real-life one, with no purpose, and no honor.

* * *

I burnt it after I read it. Can't leave that behind me, though I must admit, he skirted the issue wonderfully. He was a true master at that, the perfect businessman. I think, right then, I understood what I felt from Duo. That awful aching, beyond what seemed to warrant crying, but there were no tears. An empty, dry hurt. That's what I was feeling, right then. Like I'd stared at the sun to the point where I couldn't blink anymore, even through the pain it was making me feel, that lack of blinking.

More bitter laughter. Finally, what I'd been after for _years._ My father's disapproval, complete, and, I knew, probably unchangeable. I'd _burned_ for it for so long. But now I had it...

Maybe it was like a little boy, poking a large spider. He'd poke, and poke at it, and jump back when it scuttled forward, in fear. But he'd keep on poking it. Maybe it'd bite him, and he'd never poke it again, and that would be the lesson. Is that what my father thought? That his letter, the harsh words in it, would make me give up my fight? If that was it, he was wrong.

Because I wasn't doing _this_ as a "poke". I was doing this because I believed in it, and I could do more than many I'd met. Was that what hurt the most? The fact that I'd not been seeking his disapproval anymore? Perhaps it was. I wasn't going to stop, though. I wasn't a little boy, and I'd given up poking _my_ spider a long time ago. For some reason, I don't think the spider realized it.

There was an upshot of this, though.

I got Trowa's question yesterday. It popped up on my screen, so it was my turn. And I had a question, but I still wasn't really ready to ask it. I would, anyway. Yet another spider...

* * *

"Figures you'd be the first one to give out a really frickin' hard one." Of course, there was the usual wryly bitter tone in his voice that I'd come to associate with him when he was being serious. One strong, slender hand went up to brush back his wild bangs. It heartened me, to see that gesture, because it meant, to me, that he _wanted_ me to see his face, when normally, those bangs were his shield against the world.

The boy on the screen, as slight as I was, despite the strength we hid, gave a huff of a sigh, yet one more dramatic move for the audience. I had to smile at it. Sure, he may have wanted me to see the expressions as they flew like hawks across his face, but that didn't mean he'd drop _all_ his masks, his ingrained techniques of hiding, running. So it was still Duo, there. "What am I most afraid of, huh?"

He shook his head, and I could see where the movement of it was restricted because he was sitting on his braid again. How that could be comfortable, I wasn't sure, given the density and the thickness of it, but he did it all the time. Now he was staring off into space, head propped up on one elbow on one of his control-chair arms, his eyes focused at me, and therefore the screen, but not really seeing it. I knew how unnerving it was, really, to face a blank screen and act like you were talking to someone about something that was like _this_.

Those advanced systems were really both a blessing—a wonderful tool, that versatility—but they were also the end of that saying, a curse, because...how, unless you were top programmers, like us, could you tell when you were watched or not? So many things we'd faced in those cockpits, so many secrets a recording of us there could tell, to our enemies, to our supposed allies. What would history use such a thing for? Would they use them to immortalize us, or...the darker side of _that_ coin.

Five minutes, now, he hadn't moved, hadn't spoken. So un-Duo-like. But that was good, really. I knew how smart he was, how much he could coordinate at once. And if something drove him to complete concentration, I knew that it'd be as searched-for an answer as the one _I'd_ come up with, when I'd asked that question to myself. I sat, watching him do nothing more than breathe, for nearly another three minutes.

When he did move, it was to shake his head again, absent-mindedly, and look at the screen straight on. "You know, I think..." He stopped again, his gaze distant once more, though only for a few seconds this time.

"So long, I've been fighting death, or even...when it gets down to it, sometimes, I'm welcoming it, inviting it in, tryin' to get it to come to me, and give me some fuckin' peace...but then..." His head shook once more. I was beginning to wonder if this was a suppressed habit. "No, I _know_ that I don't _really_ fear Death. So that's out." He laughed, as happy a sound as it could really be from him. "You know, that's what _most_ people fear, ain't it? Anyway...I think, really...I fear this peace we fight for, 'cause..." Here, he looked at the screen so intently, I wondered, for a fleeting second, whether or not he _could_ see me. "'Cause if we _do_ get this peace...I'm gonna have to live it, aren't I?"

A sigh came out, a smaller exhalation of breath, and he shifted his eyes away from the screen, looking at something that wasn't there. "I mean...what the _fuck_ do I know about just _livin'_?"

He was silent again, but I knew that there was another minute on the recording. After all, it was my life to pay attention to that sort of thing, and I had two years of training to make sure I did.

Now it was his lap, just, down, that his eyes were focused. "That's all I can think of, man. So I guess, you could say that what I fear the most? Is life, 'cause I know death, better'n anyone, I think...but life..." He just trailed off. Then his eyes flashed back up to me, the screen, and he smiled, a cynical, _real_ smile. "I'm out."

* * *

I came across the next drop point, and Heero and Trowa's answers, shortly after I got Duo's. It'd surprised me, how Heero seemed to throw himself into the questions, and answering them. So maybe not _threw_, but...he didn't try to avoid them, which is what I'd been thinking he'd do. I wonder, if, even then...if he was fighting to find peace, and, much though he'd throw himself into the missions with suicide...I wonder if it was a desperate gamble, a "if I survive all of this, maybe I _am_ worth something...at least enough to live in this world after the peace comes". But that's not what I was thinking then. Then...it was different.

It took almost five minutes to get through the multitude of times that he'd turned on the recording, and just sat there, without saying a word, and then, the recording would shut off. I counted eight times that he did it. But as they went up in number, they'd get longer, like he was just sitting there, thinking.

It made me pause, that he'd let me see him being so indecisive. He could have easily erased the first attempts, and I would never have known. On the ninth start of the recording, he sat there for two-hundred and eighty-seven seconds, doing nothing, and staring at the screen. Then, his eyes focusing in on the screen, he started.

"I don't know, for sure." He glanced off to the side, his eyes no longer making me feel pinned. His breathing was deeper, almost as if he were pulling in breaths to calm himself. After another long pause, though not nearly five minutes, he sighed, and when he looked back at me, even over the recording, and no physical touch, I could feel his hurt in my heart. I tried to concentrate on what he was saying.

"When I was in training...there was an accident, I killed civilians..." More pain. It was enough to make my mouth water. "I..." His eyes went beyond me again. "I reacted badly."

This time, when he returned to look at the screen, me, and even, the others, because they'd be watching this eventually, too, he had a nasty, bitter, sarcastic smirk on his face. "I was retrained." He gave a snort, and his dark blue eyes slid away again.

More time, and nothing. Another bitter smirk when he looked up. "So, I suppose, you could say I'm afraid of that."

I frowned. Of what? Killing civilians? Retraining? I didn't speak it aloud, though. I already had enough problems convincing myself of my sanity. He answered the question, though.

"Afraid of more death. Afraid of failing..." His eyes tightened into a glare. "Most of all...afraid that if I want to retain _me_, I'll have to fail. And failure..." His face was sharp, now, the glaring of his eyes so intense to me. "Failure isn't something I can let happen." If he were wont to give out laughter, he would've then, I think, a laugh full of the bitter feelings I could still sense, or the twisted features of his face. "But then..._my_ life's not worth much, is it?"

The recording cut out after that, without any pause. He must've edited it, to get it so close to his last word. My last, final thought on him, before I went on to Trowa's, was that it felt desperate, like he was grasping at straws. I wondered how many of us were, already.

* * *

Trowa's was short, and to the point. I expected nothing but that, though. How odd, Trowa. He forced himself so hard into conforming to some picture in his mind. So perfectly controlled. Commanding everything about himself to _be_ this image he held.

His calm face came up on the screen, his visible eye open, and staring at _me_.

Was that what people saw about us all, this intensity? Because all of them, minus Wu Fei, whom I hadn't seen yet, on this recording, were so intent, their gazes harsh, and unforgiving. Was that a part of their draw, to me? Was that what they saw, of me?

No introduction, no quibbling, or hesitation, here. He went right for his answer. "Staying nameless." And he was gone, the screen going to the strings of code, letters and numbers where his face had been.

Nameless. Weren't we all? For all that Wu Fei and I had true names, were we really any different from the other three? _Oh, Trowa._ All of us had many names. It was Duo who said that names were something other people gave you right? So the world knew us, individually by something different, and so, Trowa had, apparently, as he'd said, no true name. But together...we all had the same name. We were Gundam pilots. A group. But we were individual in there, too. Trowa was 03. That was _him,_ and him alone. None of us, no matter if we had Heavyarms or not, could be him, in his own cockpit. But maybe...it wasn't our—my—place to tell him that.

And there was something else to it, too. No matter how many other names he ever used until the day I no-longer knew him, I'd always know him as Trowa. So, to me, he had a name, and it wasn't something that would ever change.

For the first time in awhile, I felt a smile not tinged with bitterness spread across my face.

* * *

That was everyone, but one. I needn't have worried, though, because it wasn't too long before Wu Fei's answer got picked up by Sandrock.

* * *

Characteristically—or so I was beginning to believe—Wu Fei didn't seem to have the patience, or the want, to really be a part of this idea. He'd agreed to it, yes, but...well, so far, he hadn't answered or even _asked_ a question. He'd _drop_ answers, but they were all along the lines of, "This isn't worth my time." So, no, I wasn't expecting one in general, but from the amount of data listed for his recording...it looked like I'd gotten at least _some_ sort of answer, even if it was just a more long-winded version of all the _other_ "answers" he'd dropped.

He always got all the questions I sent out, because he was the pilot after me, "in-line", and, no matter the fact that he wouldn't actually _answer_ any of them, he "faithfully" passed them all on to any "drop boxes" he'd be near, or come across.

They weren't _physical_ spots, because that was basically just _begging_ for trouble, we all agreed on that. They were electronic email boxes and chat rooms, and simple ftp sites, with our little recordings mixed in with all the _real_ stuff there. They didn't even look like they were coded that heavily, but they were. Tricky things that were nasty if you actually tripped, they'd rip through the hard-drives of nearly anything in a very small amount of time. We used simple passcodes, usually a phrase, we had a list of about a thousand of them, that we'd compiled for different times of the day, for different days, months, everything. Rather amusing, in a morbid way, since we never actually felt the need to go over and recreate the list...I guess we never thought we'd live that long. Mortality...for some reason, I didn't think I'd be getting any of the responses as "death", because it was something we'd really, truly given up on.

So maybe it was a last, end result, avoid at...some costs, idea for most of us...I shook my head. All of this over Wu Fei's apparent answer, or the lack I was expecting. It seems that I have a lot of expectations...if they kept coming true... I felt a bitter smile bloom from my emotions. Maybe I should check for _that_ possibility, too. Oh, wouldn't H get a kick out of that. I shook my head at that, and began the sequence for Wu Fei's response.

He wasn't one to peter around a subject, or not look you straight in the eye. So concerned with the philosophy of it all, the psychology of it. He was staring straight at me when it began, and it unnerved me much as it had with the others, already. But this was different, because Wu Fei wasn't the same as they were. It was probably that same need to understand, that almost _forced_ him into making me feel like a bug. A small, fifteen-year-old, (nearly sixteen, I'd let this war suck almost three full years out of me, now,) bug with blond hair, making me feel like I was playing at all of this. I knew I wasn't. I had enough training to know that, too many hours, piled on top of each other, seemingly never-ending, to let one of my "contemporaries" push me around with his wordless, _opening_ gaze. But I could _feel_ the want in him for me to do exactly that.

"You finally found a question worth answering. Way to go." That sneer of his...one of these days. Another shake of my head, the ragged ends of my hair brushing across my eyes, only to be swept back. I knew I never would...but I could still think it, right? Right. But apparently, there _was_ an answer coming, so I knew that, despite the part where he decided to just _sit_ there for a minute, he was going to answer. Yay, go me. I got him to answer. Sometimes, I couldn't help but think of what a little asshole he was, and right then...it was _definitely_ one of those times.

But, after sitting there for that minute...he seemed to lose the tension in him that I'd never seen him without, and when he finally opened his mouth, it'd lost that edge to it.

"You'll be getting a file, it's an update on the information that you were originally handed about me." His lips gave a bitter twist, and his hard black eyes bored through the screen. "I can't think of any way to say it."

Then it cut out, leaving me only a blank, fading screen. Even as it was fading out, I got a secure transmission from H, but it was all encrypted data, and it took me a moment to get it cleared. As I looked at it, though...I was _not_ happy to know Wu Fei'd written a protocol that could read my hard-drive, because it felt too "studied", too clean for the download to occur that close to when I'd finished looking at his message drop. Looks like I was going to be doing some interesting programming..._after_ I looked at the updated "profile". Hopefully the answer would be in there, in some form or another, because I was _very_ curious about what would be important enough to Wu Fei for him not be able to communicate it.

For the most part, I skimmed over it, not that much had really changed. But at the end of it (and I had to let _some_ of my amusement about the fact that it was always at the end out) there was a few new notes, quick and dry. Now, that stopped me, and I re-read them about a dozen times, trying to assign them some feeling, or get a reading of them, an emotional feeling from them.

I knew what he was afraid of. And I'd been right, it wasn't a physical thing. Unworthiness. No end to it. Never finding something worth supporting. It made sense, a sick kind of perfect sense, even. If you took it at face value, he was afraid of letting down his wife...but then, I've never let things rest at the surface. I could see another angle to it, in those few words. He wasn't really afraid of being unworthy. He was _terrified_ of not finding his _own_ purpose. His own reason to feel the zeal that she apparently felt, about something he'd found on his own. I think, out of all of them, this answer depressed me the most, because it was really so close to the one _I'd_ come to.

Neither of us...well, _I_ knew I could never live up to the standards that my father gave me. I knew it. I don't know if he knew how much I could feel his love, and his frustration with me. I'd never actually told him I could, because, for too long now, I'd viewed him as being a man I couldn't inherently trust. Now that's an awkward conclusion to come to, isn't it? Not being able to trust your own family. I've hid it, though. There's only so much you can pull out of me, because, as we all did—though, perhaps Wu Fei less than any of us—my face wasn't the one I really showed the world.

I'd have to call my little "experiment" a success. I'd learned more about them, and even myself, really, by doing this. That was the idea, right? To learn, to figure things out, even to assuage curiosity... Now, though...now I had to fight, to run, and hide. And learn to believe in myself, instead of what others thought of me. I wasn't thinking it'd be the easiest, by any shot. And I was _really_ pulling myself back from talking to thin air, here, my mind was swirling around and around, and...I heaved a sigh. But I'd try not to. Who knows who was listening, or could have been, at any moment. Safer to keep it all in my head, where only I could worry about it.


	2. Chapter Two

Shortcut Communications Ch. II

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They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.  
_Benjamin Franklin, (1706-1790)_

Now frontiers drift like desert sands  
While nations wash their bloodied hands  
Of loyalty, of history, in shades of gray

I woke to the sounds of drums  
The music played, the morning sun streamed in  
I turned and I looked at you  
And all but the bitter residue slipped away  
_A Great Day For Freedom, Pink Floyd_

When did it stop being my war, and become theirs? I'm forced to find my own definitions for the things I do, and the reasons I do them. My actions, and the results, have precluded me from the teachings and ways I have followed, and I'm lost now. But I'm not lost, really. Because I'm finding my _own_ path. Cutting through the miasma that is this human life.

I shook my head, and I'm sure it looked like I was either mad, or plagued with gnats...but really, what could the opinions of such a low tier in the race that is humankind matter to me? I felt a less than kind smile cross my face, and I could also almost feel them shrinking back, away from me in that little bus depot. They were _supposed_ to mean something to me...that's what had been told to me after all—that I was fighting not only for Nataku, but for them as well, because that's what _she'd_ been doing.

I couldn't find her justice, though.

Her justice made it so that I was fighting for her, _and_ for them...and I didn't want to fight for them, because that gave me responsibilities I did not want. But it was _their_ war, not mine. I must fight for them, just as I was fighting for her. And to fight for them, I needed to go beyond her logic, and her justice.

I was being forced to rely on my own justifications, because hers...hers, and what mine used to be, were no longer enough in this war. But this relying on my own, was going even beyond finding my own, it was making me see the validity in others' choices in justice. Others, who were not as I was in my fighting, or in my choice to fight. As a futile practice, it no longer holds sway, but...fighting is what will bring this world to justice, so it is something I must do, to show myself that I do still have a sense of it.

But that was fallacious thinking as well. It was not just I that was fighting, there were others, fighting for the same cause that I was, but with different methods, and different reasons. Different people, different ways of thinking... Why did they fight? What was their sense of justice that led them to fight?

No, that wasn't the question. I knew _why_ they were fighting—they believed in it. Just as I did, if only for different reasons. So that was a question I already knew the answer to.

Would it be an examination in human nature, then? A search for, not why they _were_ fighting, but for why they fought at all. My choice had been to _not_ fight, until I was given an incentive for doing so. And then, I did, because someone showed me that fighting could be something worthwhile. Still, though, that essence had to be already within me if I were going to choose to fight at all. There had to be some part of me, somewhere in my "self", even unbeknownst to me, that _justified_ fighting. So if that were the case, my own beliefs, that I had relied upon, were no longer true, which led me back to the original point—_my_ war, the one I'd been fighting before, wrapped up in the bindings of my duty to Meilan, or _theirs,_ to fight for a cause, and it was theirs, not my own, that I was now fighting.

The bus I was waiting for was called so I boarded, and chose a seat that would show me the countryside as I passed through it. That was calming; it reminded me of Nataku, to see the green, and the colors of the flowers.

I'd remembered, sitting there in that depot, why I was avoiding places of any human habitation. They were so full of things that reminded me of the ultimate purpose of this war, and for the most part of it, how that purpose had not been mine. I still couldn't really see that true purpose, because those people couldn't. Here, on Earth, just as on the colonies, they might truly believe that they wanted their freedom, their rights controlled by them, rather than a military power, but now, they didn't even speak up at all about it. They let it stew, and felt that just resisting in the quiet of their own minds was enough. The feeling alone, I suppose, is the thought that let them choose that course of action.

I couldn't do that. Something about it wasn't right, and the idea never had been, it'd just been the application of the fight for the feeling of true freedom that had held me before.

It would be something in their own minds though, that would make me fundamentally different than they were. Something about the way I thought, and made decisions, was different than those that, although they were unhappy in their own minds with the establishment, did nothing about it, not even vocalizing it. And if this were to be the criteria of that difference, that meant that my allies, the other pilots, who were also people who, for some reason, fought, would have that same difference in them.

Because they were fighting, as I was. These people around me truly were as sheep and cattle. Not quite, perhaps, because I'm sure that, at some point, the majority of them have disagreed with some aspect of the established governments that surrounded them, but many of them talked, and did not a single thing to actually acquire that which they said they sought, and many more than that said nothing at all, choosing to live in a land of silence on the things that _were_, or should have been, so very important to them.

So how could I find my sense of justice from them? They were weak, and had no direction. The ones that _had_ direction, chose to utilize that sense of it in an entirely different manner than I did. But we, being who we chose to be, were different, if only because of that inherent choice, in the far, deep recesses of our minds, to _do_ something about the situation. No matter our different perspectives and driving forces.

It was something to think about. And, maybe, even something to ask about, to see if they could shed light on something that might end up as a primary part of our lives, and the way we lead them, in the future, should we decide to outlive this war.

* * *

Did I really want to look at the answers they had? There they were, right in front of my face, but was I ready to read them? I didn't know. Was what they came up with going to help me come to some decision in my own dilemma? Perhaps. And I think that it was that word, that "perhaps"...perhaps they could understand it, could understand it because they were unlike all the weak people I'd come across in that bus depot, and so many other places across this Earth, and the colonies. But these four other pilots, and the few people who could fight us, they were not as weak. Five of us, and we had no "reason" to fight. We had no charismatic leader, or dictator. No incentive to be on this giant suicide mission than whatever reasons _we,_ personally had. So the reason that we fought, therefore, must be something in our own heads, and not something given to us from an outside influence.

Heero gave me the same look I always got from him, quiet, intense. He stared at the screen, and gave me a short answer, just as I was expecting from him, though why I was expecting that, despite the fact that he'd given an in-depth answer to Quatre, I'm not sure, but that's all I was expecting. That was the way _we_ communicated, just as it was his way to do so differently with the other pilots.

"I fight because it's what I understand, and what I was trained to do."

But that could have so many other connotations. Was he giving me the room to interpret it? Allowing me to draw my own conclusions? Was he assuming that I knew him well enough to come to the "right" conclusion? This brought up a subject I'd been avoiding since Quatre had sent his last question. Did I _know_ any of them, and if I _didn't_, did I have any right to second guess any of them, or even judge them?

Human nature, though...we judge everything, so there was no excuse for not, at the very least, coming to a definitive point on these issues, using what he'd given me, and, because it required me to pick it apart to understand it, my own interpretation of what he'd said. I had asked a question to find out their opinions, therefore, I must honor that, and decide what those opinions really mean, to me, or even, to them.

To understand something such as war, and fighting...what did that make Heero? A man with no past, or future, because he lived only for the fight? No, I can't see the past not being a part of him, he would have no strengths, and that is something he has. Perhaps it is then, that fighting is all he's ever seen as having any worth, for him. Is it as much of a wall, both a strength and a weakness, as that which I grew up with, surrounded by? Because, now, I can begin to recognize that some of the things I believed as a child couldn't hold true to the world I live in. If he were still embracing this wall, what would it take to break it? Because, as his companion, though I may not truly wish his company, or anyone else's...I have begun to see that such walls grow into great weaknesses. Doing what you are trained to do, I can understand. Living only in the present...perhaps I could not, because, then, I was very much interested in living in the past, though the times were always going forward, and I, perforce, must go too.

Did this train of thought mean that I actually _was_ seeing them as being a necessary part of this fight? Judging them as being a force I must fight with, and not against. It was true, my goals were aligned with theirs, but I knew that they wouldn't always be, because they fought for different reasons than I. The common thread wasn't, therefore, what we fought for, but why we did, as I'd been thinking before. Something acknowledged not just by myself.

One answer.

* * *

I could identify with Heero. I could not with Trowa. He was full of none of the passion that I displayed, or Duo, or Quatre. He simply melted through one day, and the next, and the next. He was focused, too, on the present, and what part he played in it. This was what I had seen, so far. _All_ that I had seen. That rationalization, though...it wasn't all appropriate, was it? Because...his answer to Quatre's question. That had been something for the future, not the present.

What was this trepidation I felt, opening this link?

"I have nothing to lose by fighting. Many of the people who hesitate don't do it for themselves." Steady, green eyes that peered through the light brownish hair. Calm, devoid features, that wanted to refuse such things as settling on the mind.

Well deserved hesitancy, apparently, because this seemed to be nothing more than a quiet, harsh scolding, filled with a lack of emotion, but not a lack of force, or backing. I deserved it, I saw.

Two answers.

* * *

Yet one more warm-up sequence in Nataku. It was a leisurely one, though, not the mad dash that it could sometimes be, so it was slow to the point of being nearly lazy. I reveled in the fact that I could afford that laziness, that one, small indication that all was well, or, as much as it could be. The thought of laziness made me think of Duo, though by now I knew, he wasn't, anymore than I was, because I took twenty seconds to boot Nataku up, instead of eleven point four. He couldn't be, because he was just as much a pilot as I was. He'd had more training than all but Heero, even. But he had that air to him that made him _seem_ "lazy", or some definition thereof. One more mask, an untruth. Was that why he was ever so adamant about "telling no lies"? I wouldn't be surprised.

It seemed my thoughts of him brought with them a physical reality, because it was his drop that appeared on the screens after the mobile suit was warmed up.

Going against my sense of dignity, I must admit that I wasn't really looking forward to opening his message, more so even than Trowa's. He saw things in an entirely different light than I did, and he made fun of most of it. His lack of reverence made me wary, both of him, and his actions. He was unpredictable, more so even than the other pilots, because he chose to do things according to some system of right and wrong that only he listened to, or even knew. He'd told us, at some point early in our acquaintance, that he didn't take orders. He _followed_ them. "When and if he felt like it" was to be unspoken, but understood by all of us.

Before his file loaded, I pulled up his face in my mind, and concentrated on it, willing it to move, to show me again what he was like. With surprise, I noted that it wasn't his smiling face that formed vaguely behind my eyelids, but the serious, determined soldier who came closer to being in focus. I can say that the surprise lasted only a moment before I came to an understanding with the determined eyes of the Duo I contemplated. Perhaps...perhaps, in some deep, dark part of my mind, it was time to lay to rest the insistence that this, an obvious rebuttal to my, admittedly, stubborn beliefs, was wrong, and weak. Because, the more I concentrated on the idea of Duo, the more I came up with the part of him that he outrageously called the God the Death, and not the part of him that laughingly joked about it.

I let the image go as the beep of Nataku heralded his face once more. And I was right. It was not his laughing face that appeared, but the grim, dark look I was associating with him.

"You know, I think Freud would be upset if we started assuming the guise of psychiatrists, 'cause that's what you're asking us to do." His eyes were worried. What was he afraid of in me? His shoulders heaved in a sigh. "I only know that this _is_ what I should be doing. I have nothing else to live for, but this one purpose." Now a cynical smile. "No more. No more of this...this sheer madness that has enveloped this sphere of human wasteland."

He leaned back in his seat, arms crossed over his chest, the white of his cuffed sleeves giving off the greenish yellow glow of the lights they reflected.

"What more do you want me to say? That I fight so others don't have to? Yeah, that is a part of it, but saying just that would be a lie of omission. I fight for revenge? Some ball of burning rage, buried deep in my psyche, that's just begging to be let out? True, but still a lie."

His head tilted to the side, regarding the screen. "So, what's behind door number three? You tell me, 'cause I don't think this is an answer you're gonna find anywhere else. Because _you're_ the one obsessed with this one, my man. I don't need to know why I fight, rather than sitting back," here, he leaned further back in his command chair, and stretched his arms over his head, "and enjoying a sideline view. I just will."

He'd dropped his arms back across his chest, and, again, regarded the screen, this time through slit eyes. "That's the best I can do for you." He flashed a grin, and the dropping of his hand onto the control chair's arm precipitated the connections' cut.

Three...but what to do with this?

* * *

"It's what's most logical, for me." A frown. "I have resources that others don't, and skills, abilities, talents...it just makes sense, for me to do it." Pause, maybe thirty seconds, then a shrug. "Right now, it's all that I could see myself doing, in reality. I mean, yes, I _could_ have tried to go by my father's credo, but _really_...this is what I could _see_. This is all I could agree with." Eyes that I'd never seen truly troubled before looked at the screen. "I had to face my lack of faith a long time ago, my friend. I can't say that I believe in a greater good, or even that humanity _has_ a greater good. All I can do is hope, that when this war is over, no matter what side wins, that I will have been honorable in it, and that the people I have tried to free understand that whatever comes next is not really up to us, but to them, because _we_ are not the people we are fighting for."

All accounted for.

I needed to reboot my systems. They were running too slow, and I was getting annoyed with them. Unfortunately, I was in an unsecured location, and could not, therefore, completely shut them down. I had the nasty feeling that it was going to result in a power failure during a battle, when I'm face to face with my enemy. But until I reached a point where it's safe to shut them down, my systems would just have to suffer through it with me. There were always risks involved, and out of all of us...I was beginning to think that I was the one most likely to take the more clear cut risks for personal reasons, instead of the weight of the reward over the risk.

Not something that I felt the others would appreciate, but something that made sense to me, and was therefore something I would continue to do, because that was the path I chose, and, as Quatre said, the only thing I could see myself doing. So I suppose, that, yes, they did answer my question for me, even though I had to reason through it on my own, in all reality.

The reason that we _all_ fought, and didn't stand aside, was because it was the only thing that made any sort of sense. No, it wasn't a scientific answer—but I think that here, anyway, it was okay, because in this war, we were having to learn more and more to depend on our instincts, rather than what we'd been taught, or learned before we stepped into this vast arena where it was literally us, separately, but _also_ as a group, against everyone else.


	3. Chapter Three

Shortcut Communications Ch. III

——————————————————————————

Kites rise highest against the wind, not with it.   
_Sir Winston Churchill, (1874-1965)_

You can get more with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.   
_Al Capone, (1899-1947)_

New school. New life. New mission. _Hmph. New me, please._

The hallways were packed. Absolutely swarming. There was just something about "American" schools. It was what, three hundred _years_ after the dissolution of the country, and they _still_ couldn't be labeled as anything else. Not even the brief glimpse I had of school on L2, the supposedly "American" colony, was like this.

I shook my head, the heavy weight of my braid rippling a split second later. I was "hovering" in the doorway to the administration offices, somewhat daunted by the sheer mass. There were darting bodies, and calmly moving students, all of them laden with books or book bags or even other students. How the hell did they get anything into their heads with this racket going on?

This was worse than just about anything else I'd ever seen. Take about two thousand to twenty-five hundred _teenagers_ all intent on their own thing, with their own alliances and disputes, their own necessary routes to avoid further disputes or to make new alliances, give them a short time limit to get to a designated spot, with consequences should you not be there on time, give them small hallways and moving obstacles in the form of administration, (hall-watch,) and this is what you get. It was worse than a battle at full stride. At least there the lines were delineated. _Yeah, me against all of them._ A dart of color flashed by, closely pursued by three older boys, great hulking brutes. _Geeze, what is _with_ this place? Note to self: don't ever enroll in a public school in North America again. Ever. Why did I let you talk me into this, Professor?_ I looked at the map I held again, then looked up, sighing, as I prepared myself to brave the sea of humanity that roiled in front of me.

I didn't really need to look at the map again, but I'd found out a long time ago that if you picked up things too fast, it was worse than if you did it too slow. My memory had always been a blessing, as Sister would have said...but it could also be a curse in disguise. I mean, when does anyone ever think about having to slow down how fast you've got something memorized? _Except for me_. I remember everything, I notice everything. And ever since I first landed on the streets, feet-first, I've learned, sometimes slowly, that everything gets hidden. You don't give anything away, not to anybody. They could be as close to me as God is to some Christians, and I still won't tell them all my secrets. _Never again._

I shook my head as I stepped out and prepared to force my way through the kids that crowded around me. If I dwelled upon my personal demons, I wouldn't be able to give myself my own defense. _Remember, Kid, don't do anything but smile. Even if they shoot you, smile._ Funny, how as my speaking skills increased in their abilities and scope, my internal voice did too, losing that street brogue that had filled my entire childhood. _Down to the end of this hall, take a left...okay, three doors on the right, should be doubles...oh, they're open, kids everywhere...geeze-us, where the fuck do they all go?_ A shrill ring broke out above me, and I could barely manage to keep myself from pulling on it—a second before I remembered where the fuck I was. No gun pulling in crowded hallways, no sirree. Suddenly, my senses were on hyper alert, thanks a helluva lot to that fucking bell, and, I noticed, the switch in the students. Instead of just the ridiculously frantic pace from before, now they were all tearing down the halls in an insane scramble. _Well, I must be late._ I came even with my new class, the door was open, a rush of talking coming from it, and I could see the light move in interesting ways across the floor from where I stood behind the doorjamb, so they must still be settling down, still moving all over the place in there. I stood where I was, just out of sight, and ran a hand through my bangs and over the top of my braid before I pasted a great smile on. I was wishing for my hat again—I seemed to be doing that a whole lot lately. _Hell, man, it's just a class. Get over it! Shit, I mean, come _on

I gave my shoulders a mental squaring, controlling the impulse that hit me to do it for real, to pull my shoulders outta that nice slump they had going for them. No, something so silly as this wouldn't slip past my self-control. Forget it. Don't show them. Don't show anybody. Say hiya, I'm _insert name here_, and I'm new, been assigned to this class. And the teacher will say: Hi Mr. _name_, why don't you sit next to such-and-such there. Just like they always do. This was what, the fifth, sixth, school I'd stayed at for a mission? And they were like fuckin' broken records. But I was still wishing for that stupid hat. Sure, hiding out in the open's a great idea, but that didn't mean I had to like it, no way.

_Okay, Maxwell, that's enough stalling already._ I restrained the deep breath I wanted to inhale, instead stepping calmly into the classroom, a friendly, open smile spread across my already open face. And then I resisted the urge to shrink when everyone facing the door shut up and looked at me, the suddenly unknown, etc., etc. Which figured—there were, quick count, nice long sweep, make it look just like you're checking out the relative coolness of the new classroom—nineteen students in Advanced Calculus. Imagine. And _shit_, I'm obviously the youngest in here. And they knew it already. If it's one thing I can't do, I can't fool my own age group about my age. Give me an adult, any adult, and I can act two or twenty, but these guys, not a chance. The "youngest" thing is gonna stick me, I can already feel it, way down to my grungy, bare-footed toes still stuck in that gutter. Those toes're sayin' run, they're gonna eat ya' fuckin' _alive_.

But I smiled anyway, and acted as close as I could to a vapid, get-ahead teenager, and walked up, nice and cocky, shoulders artistically shrugged, and held out my "papers". _God, now I sound like I'm a puppy from the pound._

"Hi! I'm new, just got transferred, and they said this is my class." The teacher, nice, fairly attractive woman, must work out, _I_ don't have biceps like her, friendly smile, little vicious around the edges, too many years as a teacher, held out one hand for the papers while the other, pencil still firmly gripped, never moved off the paper—ah, grade book. Must be roll-calling. I didn't even bother hiding the quick glance I threw at the page where she was marking; she was the only one to see, and she was looking down. _Well, well, well. _Three people absent_. That makes twenty-two, plus me, twenty-three all told, in the ACalc class. And this'll be useful to know _when

"Okay, just hold on a second while I finish this up." She also never looked up at me.

"Sure, no prob." I made sure the papers made it to her hand, and gave the side of her head a beaming smile. The papers got me an absent nod, as she continued to scan the book in front of her, and then, reaching the end, looked up at the class—talking again, I was only worth a minute and four seconds of silence.

"Has anyone seen Brit?" Shaking heads. "No? How about Amy? Or Sarah?" More negatives. "Okay." She dropped the pencil on the book's page, and brought her left hand in front of her, looking me in the face for the first time as she did. "New, huh? Where're you comin' from, kid?" What, her eyes were broken? If she'd look at the paper, she'd _see._

Ah, but then...yeah. I just smiled, as usual, and started in. "Actually, I'm from overseas."

Her "look-over" of me sharpened, and I could see her eyes flick back up to my face when she saw the end of my braid peeking out from behind me. When she was meeting my eyes again, her eyebrows raised. "Overseas? Wow."

Despite the attention that cover got me, it was a good idea to use it. After all, by using _that_, it'd let me get away with things, because it could be written off to already being foreign, and they wouldn't really think about the colony angle. So I'd begun using that even if I just skipped towns. I'd tell anyone who asked that I was just in, and whoever they were, from the mailman, to the landlord, or the hotel lobby manager, they'd just somehow completely miss the stuff I knew I couldn't hide. When I'd stumbled across it, it amazed me, truly, because they were so ridiculous about it, ignoring an amazing amount of evidence to the contrary, and took your word, because it was already so different. But hey, it was in my favor, so I was sure as hell gonna use it.

"Yeah, I just transferred in from New Zealand, and all over the place before that."

"Yeah? That's really cool." She'd been gathering up stuff around her, straightening things out a little bit. My name was snagged off the papers and written on the line after her last student, in her little book. "So, Duo Maxwell. Welcome to Midville High."

She'd gone on a little bit longer, but really, it was just the, "well, lemme find this and that, and, oh, take a seat by so-and-so, etc, etc." I listened, but zoned it out, watching the students around me. They got back to their lesson, after she'd made sure I was up to date with them. I proved it, by giving the correct answer to her little warm-up question. It was a lower level equation, nothing I didn't know how to do in my sleep. Never had a problem with book work. I don't really know why, but G was always pushing me harder and harder. I'd kept up, and that, to me, was all that mattered.

Thos kids, in that class...they were so normal, that classic definition of "normal". They had mothers, and fathers, and when they didn't, it was for normal reasons. This little corner of the world hadn't been hit heavy with the fighting. The reasoning for having a base here, I'm sure. I wonder how many civilian personnel worked in the labs. I knew, now, that the label "civilian" didn't really apply. After all, they were still contributing to the efforts of OZ, and that, therefore, made them fair game. Good enough for me.

Those normal kids. God. They'd stumbled me, with their little, petty concerns, and the sheer mass of them. So many people, completely fine living in their little, fragile glass balls. Like snowflakes. All it would take is one touch from me, or any of us, and we could pop those bubbles. I guess our hands were too wet in too wrong a liquid. But I envied those kids, in their world. So _normal._ Which I could never have claimed to be.

* * *

Heh. Wu Fei's already gotten back to me. He must've been pretty close to my last location, because he's _not_ the one who'd been sent the question directly. According to his flash file, he'd had a wife before this. Just great. Maybe it could be intuitively told that he'd not had marital bliss, but... 

As per the standard, his face popped up, nice, habitually, condescendingly _blank_ look in evidence. "You know, one of these days, that's gonna stick like that." My rear screens showed the blooming flames a split second after I felt the shockwave through my seat, and my controls. Wu Fei, in his recorded glory, didn't even know I'd just blown up four billion dollars' worth of equipment, data and personnel.

I had to stop the recording, because he'd started talking, and I couldn't hear him, I'd been too busy talking to thin air, and admiring the lovely glow behind me. I think it's no doubt that I have a slight chemical fetish. Especially for volatile liquids. Too bad they smell so funny.

Ah, yes, Wu Fei's response.

"When I was fourteen, the Alliance, though it was really OZ, decided to 'clean up' my colony." Well, wasn't that an opening. I knew _all_ about clean up. I didn't know that Wu Fei did, though. "Because of Shenlong, and Nataku, they didn't get the opportunity."

If it was possible, I'd say he'd tightened up even more than he'd been before, but I was _really_ sure he'd been at the limit already. "Because of the Gundams, I don't have my wife. Because of the Gundams, I have my entire clan, am alive, and have a purpose." Black screen.

Fuck.

* * *

So, I've logged more hours of sleep in the past three years _in_ DeathScythe, than out of him, right? You know what the horrible problem with that is? If there's an alarm going off, doesn't matter if it's some stupid idiot squadron of Leos, or a _bloody fucking mail drop,_ it wakes me up. _Not_ in the best mood for Trowa. Not at all. 

But hey, I wanted to know these people. So I secured the drop, and took a look.

He'd always struck me as somewhat of a cold fish. In control of everything of himself, but..._too_ in control. I'd never seen him have any problems with anything. No outbursts, or break downs, like what Heero'd done with the doves. Nothing. So I was wondering what _would_ be coming from him, when all shit came down, in his arena. What would it take to make him crack, even a little bit? In everything I'd seen, to date, he'd given nothing but an impassive face, impassive eyes, as he looked out from the screen.

Admittedly, even under the best of circumstances, I'm still a little bit groggy when I wake up, but I wasn't _too_ groggy, not to _see_ his face, and attempt to read it. Because, I mean, this is what I'd been trained for. To be alert, to be the best. When G'd been training me, it hadn't been to be one of five, it'd been to be the_ only_. If I couldn't rely on my self, who was I suppose to do it on?

But now...it was these four other guys. And Trowa's impassive face split, and spoke.

"I was already part of the resistance. I would have stayed there, as a mechanic, or as something else." He gave an insouciant shrug to me, and a nod, and was gone.

Cold fuckin' fish. But still, probably, a good guy.

* * *

When Quatre's came in, it was a long time from Trowa's. Because he'd built ZERO in the meantime, and Trowa...well, we couldn't find him. Heero'd seen him last, and his drop to me was the last on-line communication anyone'd gotten. Oh, and all that other shit had happened, too. Like, Trowa and poor 'Scythe...and then, me and Wu Fei, and the scientists...we'd gotten off Earth. All sorts of shit. 

He wasn't in Sandrock. So the backdrop was a room, plush, full of neutral browns and beiges. Must've been his father's office, or one of them. The chair he was in dwarfed him, in its leather glory. But it was still Quatre. He looked me, or the screen, straight in the eye while he took a sip of his tea.

"You know...I think it's almost ironic that my father's once again a part of it all." He smiled. "Especially considering where I am, now." Another sip. "I met H in 193. Just before I first fought." Smile, sip. "He chewed me out, in a roundabout way."

That chair, the desk...it was all so big for him. I wanted to say, too big. But I knew him. Whatever he wanted to do, he'd do it, with no hesitation, and no need for any. I smiled. I could feel it. Because it was just like any of us. No hesitation, no need for it. Story of our lives. Right.

Quatre was pushing a finger along the wood grain of the desk. Not nervous, just thoughtful, before he looked back up at "me". "This place...it reminds me of what I was. If I'd never met H, and never had any reason to...I think this would have been me." He shook his head. "Not that I would be what my father _wanted_ me to be...but I think, I'd very soon be growing into him. Bitter. Spiteful." Sad eyes, sad smile. "Mired in my own ideals, whatever those might have ended up being." The smile faded. "I'm glad. I don't want to be his mirror image."

* * *

Heero told me in person. At the end of the war, just before he disappeared. I think he was going to go do the same thing I was—disable our Mad's labs, their bases. Just, destroy anything and everything we could find. They were dead, and gone. It was something we had to do. Alone. 

We were outside, on Earth. Lost somewhere in the hustle and bustle that was the celebrations. The other guys...I don't know where they'd gone. Off by themselves, probably. Quatre might be talking to the Corps, or maybe to someone official. Who knows. He was the only one who would be.

Maybe this was the last time any of us would be in the same place at the same time...

Maybe. But then, maybe not. For some reason, I think we'd be seeing each other again. Probably when they tried to break this peace. Sometimes...sometimes I don't really like humanity, on a whole.

Moonlight. I think I'll never be tired of it. It paints everything so silver, compared to the sun. And this moonlight drew away from me, like drawing poison from a wound, the memories of the moon I had from the rest of my life. And that thought is what made me think of my question, and that Heero was the only one who hadn't answered me, yet. And since _he_ was my drop, I knew he'd gotten it.

But I remembered it just as Miss Relena came up behind us, making enough noise to warn us. I don't think she meant to, it was just her way.

Heero and I turned to her, away from the balcony's edge. Neither of us said anything, and she apparently didn't feel compelled to stir the silence in that first minute.

After that minute or so, she turned to face Heero fully. "What are you going to do now, Heero?" her blue eyes were shadowed, as were ours, I knew. Movements were muffled in dark. He didn't shrug, or shake his head, or toss his hair back. It was as if he were a statue, in the garden of this great house, and some disembodied voice was issuing forth from his general direction.

"Whatever I need to." And he turned to walk away, hands deep in his jacket pockets.

I let him get twenty paces away, down the steps from the balcony, onto the grass of the lawn, before I quietly called out to him. "You still owe me an answer, Yuy!"

He stopped, and turned back to us. Relena was far enough away that I could tell when he looked at her, even in the dark, by the movement of his head. When he focused in on me, I held my breath. The girl standing on the balcony with me was silent.

"I'd rather be dead, Duo." There was humor, there. I nearly fell to the hard ground with laughter, because, out of all the others, his answer was identical to mine. When I looked up, it was into the eyes of a curious queen, and Heero was gone.


	4. Chapter Four

Shortcut Communications Ch. IV

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If you have but one loaf,   
sell half,   
and with the dole,   
buy a hyacinth for the soul.   
_idiom_

The bus stopped at the edge of the tarmac. There was a short curb, a wide sidewalk and the façade of an art gallery. There were also a lot of trees and shrubs and little flower beds. I dropped the foot-and-a-half from the bottom step of the bus to the concrete, not turning to watch the bus drive away, hefting my backpack higher. The straps cut into the injuries, but I ignored the pain—superficial only, the straps wouldn't increase the wounds' instability beyond limits. It looked like a sleepy town that had somehow escaped the modernization of the world. I thought back to my history training. There were little towns and cities all over the planet that showed this same sleepy reticence. I held back the snort I could feel in the back of my throat. This was a complete waste of time, and I would have informed Doctor J of that in my last communication, but he was dead, and at this juncture, I had no other option. There was no list of choices for my perusal, just this one, dead-end _vacation_. My face nearly stretched into a snarl as I thought about that last word. This was completely useless.

I probably would have stayed there, mulling and complaining and disparaging over the stupidity of it all, had not an old woman—approximately late sixties, gray, nearly white hair, thin, bony, moved in a manner that suggested either a younger age or _training_—approached me, coming towards me in my line of sight.

She stopped in front of me, put her hands on her hips, and looked me over, twice, from the tips of my running shoes to the top of my head. She didn't say anything, so neither did I. I settled for a rather neutral expression, maybe the cross between a grimace of distaste, a sarcastic look of questioning and the look of complete boredom with the world. Maybe Duo would have a way to describe it. When she did speak, she did it without smiling, her voice brisk and businesslike.

"So, you're Jay's nephew." Was that a statement or a question? She didn't wait, so it didn't matter. "Well, you're not much, are you?" Her feet spun her around, and she began walking. I watched her back for the two seconds it took her to realize I wasn't following, then, knowing my expression had slipped back into an entirely blank look—though Duo claimed that my eyes were never blank, that they seemed to be seeing _everything_, that they never stopped moving—she twisted around and spoke again, a clear note of exasperation in her voice. "Aren't you coming?" Cloudy brown eyes under raised eyebrows speared my own. I gave a short nod, and began to walk. She 'hmphed' and began her fast stride again.

There were people milling about. I circumspectly studied them as I followed "docilely" behind her, as unassuming as I could dredge myself to bear.

I understood the reasoning behind the "docile" act. Just like I understood how very good Duo was at hiding himself. I'd fought with him, and even, in the beginning, against him. But during the war, and now, I had a much harder time than he seemed to, with this act of conformity. Which he'd noticed.

So this was as docile as I was going to be. Blank, impervious.

Except for that very first day, it'd been wet. All wet. And although I'll do it, I hate running and exercising in the rain. There wasn't anything I could do about it. On colony, by this point, nearly two weeks later, I'd have overrode the system controls. But you can't do that on Earth. I don't know if I was upset about the inconvenience, or almost..._glad_ that I couldn't do anything about it. Because there were too many things that I _could_ control, through legal or illegal means, which I'd never had a problem using, anyway.

But the rain kept coming down, and I had to work in it. The woman, Marissa, tried to urge me to rest, to lie around, and I did, more than I should have. But I also did what PT had to be done. And I kept up with the computer scene, not to become lax. Other than that, there wasn't anything _to_ do. There was nothing broken around her house, apparently her son, two miles down the road, whom I'd had yet to meet, did everything that was needed, and well. There was nothing to clean; it stayed nearly antiseptic almost on its own. She'd run around with a can of lemon scented cleaner and a rag every few days, sweep, mop, and that would be that. I knew I wasn't taking up much of her routine, at the very least. I spent a lot of time out in the barn, because I couldn't be outside in the rain with the computer, unless absolutely necessary. And it wasn't, right now.

I knew it would be, in the future, but that was the future, and I was doing what I could to be prepared for it. Here, it was just peaceful, with nothing but quiet, and rain.

There were pictures on all the walls around the house. Not the fake pictures that showed scenes of life someone had never experienced, but things that were more tangible, being memories. Her children's first steps. Graduations. Weddings. Grandchildren. Everything from this woman's life.

I looked, but there were no pictures of Dr. J. Nothing as evidence to his existence in this woman's surroundings. And I still wondered how she knew him.

So much wall space, and it was nearly all covered with pictures. The woman's husband, her younger days mixed in with those of her children's. Her standing with her own family, looking content, well cared for.

Not something I could really analyze. What made them so content? Was it that they were well fed? Content with each other's company? Pictures of them happy, but also of them sad. A picture of a large group of people standing still, unsmiling, or those smiling, doing it with tears streaming down there face. I asked her about it, and she said it was a funeral. I knew those. There'd been one held for Treize and Zechs. There weren't many people who knew that the coffin of one was empty not because they couldn't find a body but because there was none to find. He'd show his real face again, some day.

So would we all. I kept track of the others, what I could. The easiest was Quatre. He was staying at his father's...or his, residence on L4. Laying low. He said in his emails that he was studying; anything and everything. Apparently he didn't think that he would be able to do anything much at all when he took over the company's reins. I thought differently, but that wasn't something I would tell anyone.

Trowa could be tracked through the circus, but I never heard from him. Wu Fei disappeared. Duo was hard to track, as well. He'd check in with us, penning us mass emails, but he wasn't in one place for very long. He held interest in a salvage yard on colony, but he wasn't ever there.

That was all of us, scattered as we were. And me, here. Two months, now. Three since Christmas. Spring. I'd not seen the beginning of spring, planet-side. It was...ethereal. I woke up one morning, and as I ran, the sun rose, and fog was everywhere. Up and down the hills, and pockets of mist. I could have been in one of the story books that I'd taken up reading. Marissa had a large collection of books, and I was working my way through them. The story books for children. The old—and new—fiction. The textbooks, those that I hadn't already read, or studied the subject of, anyway. Psychology was interesting. So was gardening, I found.

One morning, in late March, I woke up to find Marissa already up, and one of her grandsons up with her. She was setting up little cups, all along the kitchen counters, and filling them with dirt, with him following with water. She was starting her seedlings, she said. I listened while she explained that "those tomatoes, they like lots and lots of sun." And that "when it's hot outside, and sun's shining down, if you go out into the garden, it'd smell of dirt and tomatoes, and make you want spaghetti." The little boy laughed, enjoying the time he had. I stayed silent, behind them, and left to do my exercises without really interrupting. When I got back, I took out the first gardening book in that section, and started to read.

Three months. Then four. At the beginning of the fifth, Duo visited. I hadn't told him where I was, and I'd only sent blind 'mail to him, but he found me anyway. He would have eventually, even if I'd buried myself into a bunker, with no exits. That's what he was like. He could disappear better than any of us, because he understood more about the "normal" people, and he just thought like that, and he could track us better, too. Not as good as Quatre, maybe, because Quatre seemed to be drawn to people, and seemed to track them instinctively, but Duo could do it well enough.

Marissa liked him immediately. And I think he liked her too. I hadn't read enough psychology to know.

There wasn't much different about him. He was still Duo. What else was there to say about him? He knocked on the door, and when I opened it, he smiled.

"Heya, Heero." His black duffel was over his shoulder, and he walked into the house on his cat-quiet feet, just like he always had. And his braid followed him in. Marissa let him stay, but asked about him as we were in the garden, weeding together, the next morning, before Duo appeared for the day. I told her what she wanted to know, but not everything I knew. And I left the parts out that I wouldn't want someone to know. It think that was okay, because he laughed when I told him later, as we ran. And then as we sparred, I told him about how quiet it was here.

And I realized that it wasn't unquiet, even with Duo there. He fit into the peace that was the farm.

I asked him a question as he was getting ready to leave, three weeks later. About families.

I'd caught him looking at all the pictures that lined the walls many times, and I wondered what he saw in them. I knew what Marissa saw. She saw her life, laid out to view, to help her remember everything about her. I saw peace in them all. Life and death, but more life.

Duo said that he saw trust. I questioned him further, and he said: "Well, look at this one, here." It was two boys, Marissa's sons. They were both laughing, mouths open, eyes shining, and neither of them were looking at the camera. Tom, her older son, was holding onto Sacha's arm, where he hung out of a tree. That was all that supported him, that arm, and the grip of his brother. But they weren't unhappy, or scared in it. They were content, and you could tell, looking at it, that Tom wasn't going to drop Sacha, and Sacha wasn't going to let go. Equilibrium. That was Duo's idea of family.

He was gone, then, and things went back to how they'd been. At the end of the summer, when I'd been there for almost eight months, we harvested what had been planted in the beginning of the spring.

And I decided that I'd been there long enough. I was sad to leave. But I think I learned what Dr. J wanted me to learn. Including, there at the end, more about him, and what he'd been like as a young man, before he'd grown into his ideals.

They'd been family. I didn't need to know what the others thought of that ideal, because I think they'd answer the same as Duo did. About trust. Maybe...maybe, a certain concern. I think I felt that, now, for them. Maybe. I don't know. But the future would tell.


	5. Chapter Five

Shortcut Communications Ch. V

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The time is now.   
_Napoleon Buonaparte_

Yield to temptation; it may not come your way again.   
_Robert A. Heinlein_

The lions were restless. They never did like moving around much, and here, where we were parked in the middle of some, amnesiac city, they liked it even less. Always, despite the hour, I knew that there would be cars demonstrating the nearness of the street, honking horns and blaring music, all of it swirling together to mingle in the semi darkness, as dark as it could get with the lights of the city, always on, always there.

The whole place made me as restless as the lions, as I waited, knowingly in vain, for some sort of peace, some sort of indication that the world out there would refuse to acknowledge any presence, mine included. But what peace did I deserve? I leaned my head wearily against the cold bars of Samuel's cage, closing my eyes to let the sounds nearly overwhelm my exhausted mind. I leaned there and let the sounds pour in, imagining that each sound could be classified as a color, or a shade, and mixing them together, to let the raucous sounds become art, or music to the eyes, and watched the change on the backs of my eyelids, almost completely oblivious to the outside world, only the barest of defenses up as I tried to push my mind beyond all rational thought, to wear it out to the point where I could sleep, and sleep without the dreams that I knew being here, in this city, with its loudness and its smells and its lights, would give me.

This last dip into the waters of war had been hard, and I had only gotten three hours sleep in the last seventy-two. It escaped me still, and my sleeplessness had driven me forth, and though I knew I needed the rest, the lack of it didn't really bother me. But it was a surge of adrenaline that would stir up the memories I kept buried, and though I feared staying awake much longer, and collapsing, beyond any possible control of my mind, right now I feared those memories more.

I would dream of the smell of blood, and the feel of bones under my hands, the scrape of a saw through the marrow, the feel of knives across my skin, the distance in my heart, my mind as I watched, the feelings of fear—not of pain, or of dying, or of anything else they might do— but a fear of not being able to come back. Of letting go so hard that I would never find my way back to myself, never again see the things that I was beginning to depend upon. Like the smile of someone who I could now, truly count as a _friend_, or the humorous glint in eyes that had never glinted before, or the swing of a chestnut braid as it whipped around, the last, final completion of a wildly, perfectly rendered move while _two_ friends sparred. Surely, these boys, or men, they had all grown up beyond being called such a thing as "boys", were fast becoming brothers, and soul-twins, each part of them making up yet another part of everyone else, filling holes that were not sexual, no, but more—as if those holes wouldn't even have been seen as _holes_ by any other person than someone so finely in tune to. But none of them were here now, and there is nothing like knowing that you are well and truly alone to face old fears, and new ones, made of old feelings of terror.

There came a sigh from deep inside me, and I could feel my hair as it left my face, the ends of it little pin-pricks, and I was aware of the slowly warming iron where it pressed against my forehead. _Maybe, if it were that I could say that what I'd done, I hadn't, somehow, enjoyed._ My head shook involuntarily. _No, not that I enjoyed it all, but...but I know that I enjoyed the fact that it wasn't me, the fact that I had the power to do that, and that no one could hold me, no one could stop me._ I felt my heart harden, and then sink down, a stone that gave me a shiver in the warm night. I could feel the press of tears against my eyelids, but knew that I would never let them fall, not for this, my own pain. What is such pain as this? A mere candle, compared to the pain I had inflicted upon others, a faint glow in the radiance of the star. I let a sigh escape in place of my tears.

I wasn't allowed to continue my tired musings. A footstep behind me, and I barely kept myself from tensing, from showing any sign of knowledge. I must have been truly involved in my thoughts to let someone that close.

Catherine's voice let me relax as much as I could under the circumstances. "Trowa, don't you realize how late it is?"

There was a cold indentation in my face, from where I was pressed up against the bars. I could feel it when I raised my head, a cold, probably red mark that would stretch from my forehead to my chin, I had been pressed against those bars so hard. I always seemed to press against bars, though whether I was trying to get out, or _in_ was a matter I had too many thoughts on. I could feel, somewhere, the want of my face to stretch into a smirk, possibly echoing the one I'd seen on Heero's face, or maybe, it was the far nastier, more dangerous one that could be seen on Duo's face, every once in a while. But, as was usual, I pressed the desire aside, and when I raised my head, all Cathy could have seen was an impassive face, with a large, straight, red mark on it from the cold iron.

"Cathy." I stared at her. I know it unnerved her, sometimes, when I did that. I could feel another smile, this one much warmer than the last one that had fought for freedom from my control. Most of the time, nearly _all_ the time, when I stared at her, so levelly, no emotions visible to the human eye, though...but that was a thought best kept as close to my soul, and as far from my face, my mind, as on, go to bed. We act tomorrow, and the Manager...he's been worse than normal, lately." I gave her a short nod, my one indication of agreement. She smiled at me, her eyes warm, and turned away, towards the trailers, not noticing my hesitation, her turned back the only reason I'd allowed it.

My hesitation didn't last. I followed her, but I'd already finished my thoughts. I knew what I was going to do. Her back was still turned, showing confidence in my following. I smiled. Had it been a year ago, or a year and a half...I'd have been asking a question.

I didn't need to, though, because I was going to take care of it. My thoughts were on tomorrow, and what we should do, to make it the best we could...for ourselves, for each other. I _was_ going to live to see it. So I didn't need to ask about the possibility of _not_ seeing it. I just needed to live it, and do what I would regret not having done.


End file.
